Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Last week I invited my father and my brother over for dinner. The menu was... homemade pizza!

I got the recipe from Dough: Simple Contemporary Breads - which is one of my favorite cookbooks. The photos are beautiful and I felt like running to the kitchen to prepare ALL the recipes the minute I started flipping through the book. There's a DVD included, which shows Richard Bertinet's way of preparing dough. I liked it a lot, too.

I got 3 big pizzas with the dough - each one around 30cm large.

I had already made this recipe before, but I used all purpose flour and had to add more flour to get it right (something against the author's technique). But this time I used a special bread flour that was released here in Brazil and it worked perfectly!

The idea of posting pictures of the entire preparation process was my husband's, who also worked as the photographer. :D

Place the flour in a large bowl. Add the yeast and rub it with the flour using your fingertips. Add the salt, water and olive oil and mix until you have a mixture that resembles porridge.
You won't knead the dough the way you are used to - instead, you'll use your fingers as if they were "forks" and lift the dough, swing it upwards and then slap it back down, away from you, onto the counter. It will be sticky, but go ahead. Have no fear. :D
Stretch the front of the dough towards you, then lift it back over itself to form an arc - this will trap the air - still stretching it forwards and sideways and tucking it in around the edges. Repeat this sequence until the dough is not sticky anymore.
Place the dough in a lightly floured bowl, cover and let it rest for 70 minutes or overnight in the freezer, for better crust and taste - mine rose for 3 hours.

Pre-heat the oven to 250ºC (475ºF)
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface, shape into a ball and let it rest for 10 minutes.
Divide the ball into three even parts.
Continue to work on an evenly floured surface so your dough won't stick to it.
Place the heel of your hand in the center of each ball and push it away from you to stretch the dough out. Keep stretching until you have a large round pizza - the book says 20-22cm, but mine were 30cm:

Spread some tomato sauce on the dough - I was inspired that day so I made my own tomato sauce:

Sprinkle with mozzarella, parmesan, basil leaves or whatever your imagination calls for - I made one with broccoli, olives, cheese and onions:

Slide the pizza to a pre-heated baking tray or stone and bake for 20 minutes or until the dough is cooked and golden. I don't have a baking stone and placed the pizza on cool baking trays, so it took my oven 40 minutes to bake them.

8 comments:

Pat,your pizza is the one I'd die for! Perfect golden-brown crust with a bit of char (oh I love that!), plus some puff here and there... fantastic!Your book so good comes with dvd, sometimes after reading a thousand words on directions I still can't get the idea. I'm very curious about your author's kneading method... I've learnt another one which is actually slapping the dough on table on tv, really fun, although I can actually knead the dough in the tradtional way with success.Pat, I make pizza often too, maybe next time when my husband is free, I'll ask him to take some action pictures too :). Before I leave here, two very important things I want to tell you... love your olive pizza a ton! and you have pretty hands!!! :D

Dear Gattina, you're much too kind! What lovely things to write, my friend! You're so generous and kind! That's why I'm a big fan of yours!I'm a very visual person, too, and I always look for instructions that come with pictures - sometimes, I'm able to get the whole idea with them!I'm glad you like my pizza - so did my guests. My father and my brother have already asked me when the next "pizza night" is going to happen. Can you believe it? lolMy husband didn't understand my fascination for foodblogs in the beginning, but now, when I'm cooking, he runs to get the camera. Foodblogging is contagious, I guess!! lol

Hello, T.W., thank you!Good thing you mentioned this. These pizzas were crispier, indeed, tks for asking such important info!

Hi, Kristen, thank you!Here in Brazil some places use all sorts of things as pizza toppings. More conservative people get mad because they say the only legitimate pizza is margherita (mozzarella, basil leaves and tomato sauce). I'm not that strict and like other things, too, such as broccoli. I think it's also a good way to make kids have some importante vegetables.